J.
About Nova Scotia, my province :-) , when we lived in Sherbrooke Village we
rented for the first year a house in the Historic Village, a working 1750's
vintage replica. There was a woodturning shop there for the chair maker,
Rick Lair. He made great Windsor chairs, as in he has one in the permanent
exhibition of wood in Ottawa. The lathes in the shop were all treadle lathes
including a 19th century one that Rick had picked up and converted from
metal to wood working. I am not sure what is available to the public now in
the turning department what with all the cut backs and budget stuff, but it
was great then. Rick is no longer there. He is now in charge of wood
products for Parks Canada.

--
God bless and safe turning
Darrell Feltmate
Truro, NS Canada
www.aroundthewoods.com

"John" wrote in message
...
You may well be right. One of the college kids in the group tried his hand
at a bungee powered pole lathe and learned a lot about how not to do it.

This past summer when in Nova Scotia and PEI I made an effort to visit a
number of village museums. Lots of boats but no lathes. And the absolute
coolest homebrew machine I ever saw - for making the little wooden pegs
that used to keep lobster claws closed.

Next summer, Quebec most likely. I think I still remember enough French to
navigate a woodworking museum.

J.


J. Clarke wrote:

A thing to bear in mind is that most of what is now the US was only
thinly
populated by Europeans in the 18th century. Historical societies in the
thirteen original colonies and the Spanish and French occupied areas
(Florida, Louisiana, California, etc) would likely be your best bets.
Might spend quite a lot of time making calls before you find lathes.

I suspect that the wooden spring-pole lathes were mostly shop-built and
idiosynchratic--if you can make it with hand tools and it works and looks
something like the illustrations in the various histories then it's
probably as "authentic" as anything you're going to find in a museum--but
I don't have a source for that. Might be worth looking at it from an
"experimental archaeology" viewpoint--make one that looks like a picture
in a book, using hand tools only, and see what goes wrong, fix it, and
after the fourth or fifth one you should have a pretty good understanding
of what compromises are forced on you by the materials and tools.

Thanks,

J.